A time for kindness
YOUmagazineSA The holiday season for many South Africans is pretty bleak.
My heart goes out to those working in hostile environments simply because they have no choice. I’m thinking of call centre staff, mall marketers, waiters, shop assistants and till operators.
Isn’t it time we considered how we treat them? My daughter needed parttime work last year to pay for her studies and accepted a job doing marketing for a well-known brand at a shopping centre. She used to come home with the look of someone who’d been bullied, humiliated and rejected.
She told me stories of how people would deliberately walk far away to avoid her and how they’d give her dirty looks. But the worst was when she approached them they made no eye contact and walked by as if she were invisible, making her feel so bad.
My son was a waiter and worked for tips only. Often he’d tell me how he’d waited on a large table and they hadn’t tipped him – then laughed about it as if it were funny.
My heart would break and I’d wish I could protect them. Come on, South Africans, let’s be kind to one another on purpose this holiday season. It doesn’t cost a thing. LET’S HELP EACH OTHER, EMAIL
SPoverty is an enemy that wreaks havoc and brings misery into our lives and the only way to defeat this monster is by helping one another.
I don’t come from a rich family but I’ve always shared the little I have. Why throw leftovers in the dustbin when there’s someone out there who needs them?
If only we all tried harder, our lives would be better. I can’t enjoy a meal sitting next to a hungry person. The hand that gives is more blessed than the one that receives. McDIVETT KHUMBULANI TSHEHLA, HALFWAY HOUSE
SYouMagazine youmagazinesa
How often a morale booster at the right moment can renew one’s faith in humanity, help someone and give someone confidence and happiness. Sometimes just an optimistic word can help a person out of an apparently hopeless situation.
This is the time, just before Christmas, when we ought to do good wholeheartedly. Not everyone needs gifts or great deeds, but lots of things – sometimes unimportant to ourselves – can give someone else new hope. Christmas is the season of giving, so give gladly and freely.
Let’s offer our neighbour a friendly word. Let’s spread joy and have joy! JOY, BLOEMFONTEIN youmagazinesa youmagazinetv How can Adrian Gore from Discovery say we should rather be grateful for new shopping malls and not focus on negatives such as crime (YOU, 1 December)? Is he living in la-la land? REALIST, SMS My depths of despair reached an all-time low as I read in the newspaper today of a single mom of a nine-year-old boy killing her friend’s three-year-old girl, who’d been raped, to silence her and prevent her son from going to jail. Society needs help, now! JENNY ESTERHUIZEN, PRETORIA I totally agree with Proudly Pro-Trump, (YOU Say, 1 December). There’s been too much hype about the loser, Clinton! Well done, Donald Trump! HH, SIMON’S TOWN I didn’t like Hillary all that much but I think she would have made a far better president than Trump! There goes the world. NISHAAT LILLAH, YOU FACEBOOK Americans have always thought that they’re better than everyone else. Let’s see how much better they feel now that they’ve elected their own orange Jacob Zuma. PUMELELE GAWULA, YOU FACEBOOK